


Brutes

by Deanon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancient History, Backstory, Exploration, Gen, Libraries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:44:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deanon/pseuds/Deanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She explores ruins to remind herself what once was; to reassure herself of what will never be again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brutes

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually written a couple months back, and I'm aware that it's pretty much been derailed by canon (well, Doc Scratch's troll fanfiction, anyways) since then. Roll with me here. Or pretend that there are somehow ruins left over from before the previous scratch. Whatever you want to believe.

            The room had clearly once been a library, but it had long been empty. The books gave the room a musty, wet smell, and dust settled in a second carpet over the floor, turning everything a dull grey. As she held up her lantern, Aradia shivered.

            She’d known that there had once been hives like this. That, before the great war started and the trolls set out to conquer the rest of their galaxy, the culture had been very different. Education had been more highly valued, and books – now a lost art – were things commonly possessed. Once, her people had made music and art; the highbloods had created huge cities, above water and below it.

            Once, _her_ people – magenta-bloods, barely even on the hemospectrum – had been enslaved without exception. This hive, she knew by the crest on the door, had belonged to a high blue blood, probably with countless slaves of the lower castes under him. If their blood was as dirty as hers, though, they never would have even seen this room; few high bloods trusted the psychic powers of the lower classes, and relegated the most dangerous ones to as far from themselves as possible. She would be sent to work in fields or in mines, often underground, with few amenities and no guarantee of safety. When so many trolls with psychic powers were put together, untrained and unwatched, it wasn’t uncommon to see one troll lose control and destroy himself – and sometimes ten others with him.

            She knew, from some books that she’d found in other ruins, that this used to even be a sport. Pitting lowbloods against each other. Seeing which trolls lost their mind first.

            Those who showed blatant and startling power, though, like herself and Sollux, were usually culled before they were fully out of grubhood unless a job could be found for them. That any of her blood caste survived at all was a miracle.

            Aradia shined the light around the empty room, on the store of books that was probably greater than any left in Alternia.

            She found ruins fascinating, because sometimes she longed for the past. For a time when there was more to her kind then death and destruction.

            But then she would look down at her red-tainted skin, and be glad for the hundreds of sweeps that separated her from those times.

            Perhaps trolls were merely destined to be brutes – whether they held a book or an axe while they did it.

**Author's Note:**

> The word count of 413 was unintentional but awesome.


End file.
